Nearly three decades after the Cold War ended between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, a new debate is stirring: Is the U.S. heading into a new Cold War, this time with China?

"The Chinese military has undergone a substantial program of modernization to the point now where they are a near-peer military in a number of military domains," Neil Wiley, the director of analysis at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in an interview with NPR.

The family that owns Purdue Pharma, maker of Oxycontin, has agreed to give up "the entire value" of the privately owned firm to settle claims that Purdue played a central role in the nation's deadly opioid epidemic.

That's according to a spokesperson for the firm, who detailed the Sackler family's offer in an email sent to NPR on Monday.

"Additionally, the Sacklers have offered $3 billion in cash as part of the global resolution," wrote Josephine Martin, Purdue Pharma's head of corporate affairs and communications.

The current tally of 20 Democratic presidential hopefuls is enough to set a record in any previous primary season. But even with the giant number of candidates, the reality is that the winnowing has already begun.

The field is shrinking — slowly — but what's different this time compared to past campaigns is what's driving candidates to pack it in.

It started with a wrong turn while driving in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park.

That was how 8-year-old Shariah Harris and her mother found the stables of an equestrian program called "Work to Ride." Growing up in a West Philadelphia neighborhood where crime rates are high and graduation rates are low, Harris never dreamed of playing polo.

"Polo wasn't something that was in the cards for me," she says. "I couldn't afford riding lessons, or a horse for that matter. I never even thought about riding horses until I got lost in the park that day," she says.

Rafael Nadal enjoys a well-earned reputation as tennis' long-reigning king of clay — but on Sunday, Nadal reminded the world he's anything but a one-surface wonder. The 33-year-old Spaniard reasserted his mastery of the hard court, as well, claiming his fourth career U.S. Open title over an opponent roughly a decade his junior.

Mike Pompeo, the nation's top diplomat, took to the Sunday news talk shows to defend the administration's cancelling of a secret summit between the leadership of the Taliban and the president of Afghanistan. The meetings had been set to take place at Camp David days before the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State, said it was the president's idea to hold the talks at the presidential retreat in Maryland, adding it was a "perfectly appropriate place" to do so.

Britain's Secretary of State for Work and Pensions resigned from Boris Johnson's cabinet on Sunday, accusing the prime minister of "an assault on decency and democracy" for his handling of the ongoing Brexit saga.

In a letter to Johnson, Amber Rudd said she was resigning the Conservative whip — meaning she'll stay in parliament but no longer serve as a member of the Conservative party.

More than 36 hours after India lost contact with an unmanned spacecraft it was trying to land near the moon's South Pole, scientists appear to have located it on the moon's surface. But there's no word on what condition it's in.

They wore parkas to meetings, or two pairs of tights. They traveled in pairs. They feigned phone calls and hid in bathrooms. They said no. They changed careers, or industries. They accepted settlements, thinking it was the most justice they were ever likely to see.

Many women who worked with Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein say that they waged desperate tactical battles to escape his alleged sexual predation without upending their own lives.

A huge mechanical claw scoops up several ponderosa pine logs and feeds them into an industrial chipper. Thousands of wood chunks are then blasted into a large shipping container.

"It goes anywhere from one to four to three up to seven small ones can just kind of throw in that little jaws there," explains Jeff Halbrook, a research associate with Northern Arizona University's Ecological Restoration Institute. Today he's overseeing what's fondly known as the chip-and-ship pilot project about 20 minutes west of Flagstaff.

"Before I became a dad, the thought of struggling to soothe my crying baby terrified me," says Yaka Oyo, 37, a new father who lives in New York City. Like many first-time parents, Oyo worried he would misread his newborn baby's cues.

Conditions are growing increasingly dire in the Bahamas almost a week after Hurricane Dorian made landfall in the Caribbean nation.

Food, water and other supplies are rapidly running out, and residents are waiting desperately to evacuate the devastated Abaco Islands and Grand Bahama. Officials announced late Friday that the death toll had risen to 43, with 35 dead in Abaco and eight in Grand Bahama.

Fresh Air Weekend highlights some of the best interviews and reviews from past weeks, and new program elements specially paced for weekends. Our weekend show emphasizes interviews with writers, filmmakers, actors and musicians, and often includes excerpts from live in-studio concerts. This week:

On 'Pose,' Janet Mock Tells The Stories She Craved As A Young Trans Person: As a writer, director and producer of the TV series about the underground ballroom community in 1980s New York, she says the work sometimes makes her tear up.

Now onto our final game, Lightning Fill In The Blank. Each of our players will have 60 seconds in which to answer as many fill-in-the-blank questions as she can. Each correct answer is worth two points. Bill, can you give us the scores?

Democrats have been trying to pressure Mitch McConnell to take up election security measures that passed out of the House of Representatives earlier this year, but the Senate majority leader has shown little willingness to do so.

In his home state of Kentucky, McConnell has been dogged by protesters calling him "Moscow Mitch" — one of the few epithets he dislikes. A billboard in his hometown of Louisville now urges his constituents to "Tell Mitch McConnell: Stop Blocking Election Security Funding."

Patricia Santiago and her family were forced to flee their home near Colombia's Caribbean coast after complaining about neighborhood dope dealers who, in turn, threatened to kill them. But in an odd twist, Santiago now works in the drug trade — at a medical marijuana facility.

But a redesign that’s been going on for four years in Kansas could blend the two in ways aimed to help both students and employers.

Employers are now a common sight in school hallways. Mechanics show seventh graders how to diagnose a Jeep in the school parking lot. Eighth graders visit boiler factories. Schools hope to benefit from field-earned expertise. Businesses get a head start on recruiting.

It takes only a few paragraphs in Genesis for the Earth to take shape, sprout with life, and then human beings. Of course, that development actually took millions of years.

But this week, as the world watched a huge hurricane gather in the Earth's warming waters, and wreak terrible destruction on life in the islands of the Bahamas and other places, there was another humbling reminder that human beings really only play a supporting role in the history of the Earth.